A demonstration of the next release of Novell's Linux for desktops drew cheers and applause Wednesday, although the final version of the software is not expected for some months. Nat Friedman, the company's vice president of Linux desktop engineering, showed Novell Linux Desktop 10 playing videos and MP3 music files, and exchanging music and photos with an iPod and a digital camera, in a keynote presentation at the Solutions Linux conference and trade show on the outskirts of Paris.

I've been able to do those things on a Linux distribution for years, and it's only recently that it has suddenly become a problem. What's new now?

You're not joe user now are you, and I'm sure doing these types of things required some setup in the past. I think you're missing the point.

Basically what's happened is that in trying to get people to move internally to the NLD Novell have encountered problems with a lot of people using their computers for things that, strictly speaking, they shouldn't be doing. Namely, plugging their iPod in, copying MP3s, doing things with their photo collection and playing with eye candy in the form of wibbly, wobbly windows.

You're joking right?

It's nice that people can do those things, but considering what the NLD is actually supposed to do and what it's aimed for as a product this demonstration seems somewhat out of sync.

>I've been able to do those things on a Linux distribution for years, and it's only recently that it has
>suddenly become a problem. What's new now?

You're not joe user now are you, and I'm sure doing these types of things required some setup in the past. I think you're missing the point.

No he's not missing the point, as it used to work out of the box before Novell bought Suse. And it works out of the box in Mandriva and several other distributions.

>Basically what's happened is that in trying to get people to move internally to the NLD Novell have
>encountered problems with a lot of people using their computers for things that, strictly speaking, they
>shouldn't be doing. Namely, plugging their iPod in, copying MP3s, doing things with their photo collection
>and playing with eye candy in the form of wibbly, wobbly windows.

You're joking right?

No again, I think you miss the major point of what he says. That is internal dektop migration at novell, and usage of NLD. If you where a manager at Novell would you have you have your employees do that stuff on company time?

>It's nice that people can do those things, but considering
>what the NLD is actually supposed to do and what it's aimed for as a product this demonstration seems
>somewhat out of sync.

So tell me then, what are they aiming for?

From Novells pages: "Novell Linux Desktop is a desktop operating system and office-productivity environment that enables businesses to use Linux and open source with confidence." That alone or thogether with Novells talk about NLD being their enterprise ready desktop solution.

So tell us, how does playing with iPods, MP3s, photo collections and eye candy help increase office-productivity and give any enterprise customer confidence in NLD meeting their needs?

So tell us, how does playing with iPods, MP3s, photo collections and eye candy help increase office-productivity and give any enterprise customer confidence in NLD meeting their needs?

There are many reasons.

For instance, customers that use a Linux Desktop will complain if they can not listen to music while they are working. We might have different opinions about productivity [1] and listening to music, but if your Linux will not play music it is just out of consideration in many enterprise deployments.

In general, this is a matter of "You have to be this tall to ride". Both Windows and MacOS have raised the bar on what people expect on a desktop computer to do out of the box.

A few years ago a vendor could sell a computer with nothing but MSDOS and command.com as its interface. The requirements today are much larger, people expect more.

Photo management is something important to many people using computers, it is just a common place activity and its only going to become more common. Having a solid tool to manage is just part of having a complete offering on the desktop.

Besides, the productivity of Mono is so large that it was possible to write F-spot not only on record time, but have it done by a single engineer.

We are more productive with Mono than with anythign else.

[1] PeopleWare argues effectively that listening to music while doing certain kinds of tasks reduces the effectiveness of your brain.